A Twelve Letter Word
by The Kat Valentine
Summary: Relationship'. Scrabble tiles made words seem so simple, like one could put them on a board and they meant nothing more, flat, one-dimensional. Chris and Jill dodge the ins and outs of maybe not quite l-o-v-e, but something. Set pre Resident Evil 1.


So I don't own Resident Evil, in case you hadn't gathered that. I don't own it at all. I'm just a fangirl who ships Chris and Jill like you'd never believe. Especially since I write so damn much slash that this pairing kind of comes out of nowhere for me. Anyway, I'm not sure how well I'm liking this but I happened to read _Je M'en Fous _by _Striped-Tie _(if you ship Chris/Jill you should most certainly read it, it's most excellent) and was wildly inspired to write something of a similar situation. Let's hope I can do it as well.

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She hadn't planned on it, not the slightest bit. They'd been at the coffee machine in the break room, chatting it up and living off of the goodness of caffeine and all things holy, and were relentlessly teasing each other. Marksmanship skills had come into question and the two ribbed each other relentlessly. One thing had led to another and it escalated. The kidding became arguing, the arguing became yelling and the yelling had taken a strange, unexpected turn.

Jill Valentine had not believed in the phrase 'heat of the moment'. It was a silly term, it made no sense and it was tacky. Heat of the moment was for people who couldn't control themselves, or how stupid their hormones made them.

If this was true, what was rational Jill Valentine doing in a broom closet? Why were her regulation khakis around her ankles, her regulation polo lying carelessly beside the mop? She couldn't answer this question, not when Chris Redfield's pants were pooling dangerously close to the ammonia-cleansed floor and his not-yet-shaven stubble was raking her neck.

They'd both assumed it would be nothing. You know, just a discussion (that turned into an all-out war) and then when she'd pushed him he'd returned it with a tiny shove of his own. She couldn't tell anyone when their lips had met, too ferociously (they were warriors, monsters, not humans, not lovers) but it had happened and there was a thin trickle of blood dribbling down her collar-bone. She breathed, "Vampire", roughly into his skin and shoved him off. The man wasn't fazed, kept his rhythm and pushed closer, laughing under his breath.

He and Jill were very different when it came to attitude. Chris may have been an army man, but he was far more lax than the Valentine. Jill's outlook was very uniform, she had no room for the boyish methods Chris seemed to live by. Everything was clean-cut and well pressed. There was no space for this silliness, and if she did find humor it was a little more razor-edged than she would admit. They may as well have referred to her as 'one of the guys' (and they did), but she always had to be a little tougher, a little harsher, a little less sympathetic to earn her own place in the sun. This bred bad manners, a lack of femininity and no desire to coerce with anyone who wore too much Gucci and not enough Kevlar.

She swore her head was far above wherever she was, and she couldn't remember the last time anything had felt this good. She hadn't been with a guy (or dated, for that matter) in a solid two years or so. And she and Chris weren't _dating_, anyway, or anything stupid like that word. They were two humans who had mutual human needs, and these mutual human needs had to be met. It was like scratching an itch; they were just each other's back-scratchers.

The place was almost deserted, after all. The Raccoon Police Department was nearly empty save them and Wesker, but the guy was elsewhere (they hoped). They were both pulling the overtime shift to get some paperwork done. Whoever was out in squad cars were doing just that. Albert was the only reason anyone in the RPD ever managed days off, the amount of overtime he worked was unfathomable. They all wondered just what it was he did almost _all_ night.

Jill swore that between the mild grunts and the growls _("Fuck me," she muttered through gritted teeth, her hips colliding with his, her sweat mingling with his musk, "hard, Redfield") _she could hear the big bang as it occurred in her head. The sound was deafening, like what she imagined stars being born must have been like. And then there was a bang that shattered it all, and the universe came into being and the room came back. And here she was, Jill Valentine, in a broom closet with Chris Redfield. There were buckets and brooms abound, bottles of cleaning solution and uselessness, paraphernalia. And the film had faded from her eyes, everything was suddenly dark and grey and common, and Chris' dark blue eyes were Remington steel in the dark.

They both fell quiet, pulling away, and dressed as quickly as possible in the dark. They followed each other's breathing like reading pages on a book, and pretended like the static sensation of being back-to-back wasn't there. It was deep and indescribable.

"So, uh," Chris began, clearing his throat. He ran a hand through his fluffy, dark brown hair and stole a quick glance into Jill's stone-blue gaze, avoiding it as quickly as he'd seen. "You wanna go get a cup of coffee tomorrow after work, Jill?"

_Ironic_, Jill quipped, mentally, _coffee might as well be a code word for sex after this._

"Sure."


End file.
